This is cute. The New Democrat Coalition—a "pro-growth, fiscally responsible" group of Democratic lawmakers—thinks the Democrats' "lack of pro-business messaging" is what hurt them in 2014:
[M]embers also brought up concerns about the government spending bill that passed in December and the lack of pro-business messaging in the mid-term elections.
Okay, back to the story
from Politico. Warring factions of congressional Democrats have emerged in the wake of the
GOP's failed effort this week to delay certain provisions of Dodd-Frank (you know, the law that's meant to protect consumers from abuse by behemoth financial institutions).
Tension reached a boiling point during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday over the party’s stance toward Wall Street banks, according to multiple sources at the meeting.
Liberal Massachusetts Rep. Mike Capuano incensed the moderates when he said if Democrats support rolling back Dodd-Frank regulations, “you might as well be a Republican.”
Moderate Democrats—who suddenly feel under siege after Sen. Elizabeth Warren put the klieg lights on the dark corners of efforts to empower business at the expense of taxpayers—are arguing that Democrats will be confined to minority status forever if they don't, well, moderate their efforts to protect consumers.
They were angered because that same legislation had garnered support from more than 70 Democrats in the 113th Congress, but became a political landmine after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the legislation as a Wall Street handout.
Please read below the fold for more on this story.
This week, just 35 Democrats voted with Republicans to undermine Dodd-Frank, but it wasn't enough for passage. Rep. Capuano is not impressed with the moderates:
“I feel strongly that the Democratic body is supposed to be representing the average American who is unaware and incapable of defending themselves when it comes to things like Wall Street abusing them,” Capuano said in an interview. “I feel strongly about it and I said so.”
This story is still developing—at least in the sense that it will play out over and over straight through 2016 and then in perpetuity. The question isn't whether there will be warring factions—it's who has the momentum?
Warren's efforts have clearly helped empower liberals who don't buy into the idea that winning elections means favoring business interests over those of regular folks. Nor does it represent good governance.
Democrats lost the midterms because they failed to make the case to the American people that they had discernibly improved their lives. Wall Street handouts do nothing to help that case.
